We first saw Jay Leno's EcoJet mid-engine turbine coupe at the 2006 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. Leno, with General Motors' Design Chief, Ed Welburn, and Frank Saucedo, who heads the automaker's west coast studio, penned the design concept.
Leno has both a motorcycle and a pickup truck powered by "jet" turbine engines, so the plan was to create an automobile that would run on a similar powerplant fueled by biodiesel.
The EcoJet Leno was initially a static exhibit, but one thing about Jay's Garage is that everything runs. So Jim Hall, Bernard Juchli and the other wizards in the Burbank shop set about to turn the EcoJet Leno from a barely rolling display into a complete running automobile.
What they were mating were a Honeywell LT-101 turbine engine with some 700 bhp and upwards of 500 lb-ft of torque to a GM 4-speed automatic transmission. This driveline was installed amidships in a reworked Corvette aluminum frame surrounded by the carbon fiber body.
Think about the challenge of turning a static show car into a running automobile. Problems like mating the electronics of the turbine to those of the gearbox and then creating a dashboard display so Leno can monitor functions when driving.
